Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
